An answering service call I took five months ago has shown me how AA functions in other cultures. The call was from a Latino mother. “Mi español es muy poco, muy mal,” I told her, but I got across my being in AA, took her phone number, and said that “un hombre con español” would call back within minutes.
A day or so later I said to some AA pals, “We do need Spanish-speaking meetings here!” and we were off. We started a Spanish-language AA meeting, and although it’s small, one man has nearly four months and another with twelve years has turned up (plus we have two prospective Al-Anons and an Alateen). We three gringos set up the meeting, and while the other two speak Spanish quite fluently, my most recent contribution was “Telephone sus amigos en double A.” Nobody who knows me believes I then shut up. Had to. No más palabras!
Every Sunday I lay out pamphlets and books, and I listen. And every week I realize my ears and brain comprehend perhaps one percent. Two or three times in the meeting I hear a word like policia, a man puts his hands behind his back, and I think, “He got arrested.” Or he counts on his fingers–“Mi casa, mi familia, el trabajo, enfermo”–and I translate silently, “problems at home, with his family, on the job, and he was sick, too.”
Otherwise? Sentences are as fluid as music. The tone may drop and we hush our breath to hear. At other times the sound rises, followed by mutual grins and laughter.
For half a minute, every week, I wonder why I’m here. I add almost nothing verbally, understand far less. I’m just the fat little old lady in the corner. At home, I could attend to that mountain of chores–my gardening pants need patches; the breakfast dishes overflow the sink; onion sets must be planted before they sprout or die; my lunches haven’t been made and frozen.
But I continue to sit, sensing an atmosphere as tangible as the floor beneath us, as vital as the man beside me. The air trembles with–do I sense a Something which touched Bill and Dr. Bob as they met? I feel I might almost snatch literal handfuls of this unseeable Something settled palpably among and around us.
My brief desire to sew old jeans or sow new seeds has gone. Not comprehending the language may alert me to what exists behind the words and surrounding the speaker. Understanding so few words, am I perhaps focused toward subtleties of reality usually unperceived?
Four months ago, the man who coordinates this meeting was concerned with how he would run it, make it work. Now I watch him noticeably kick back and absorb. I worried about literature; there is ample literature, and Miguel has over four months.
And this week, the Latino members–not us gringos–debated how to spread the word. Our teen wrote an announcement for the Spanish radio station. I’ll copy the flyer for Miguel to plaster around his town, ten miles away. He heard and approved the answering machine message, chuckling at its English conclusion after the long Spanish greeting.
I have only a smattering of Spanish, but our language of the heart is instantly translatable if my perceptions are alert. I thank my Higher Power–and AA–for allowing me the privilege of beginning to understand it.